Writing D64 images to real floppies
Hello everyone.
When I started my #retrocomputing journey i knew that i would end up with a floppy drive at some point. Had to upgrade from tapes right? One thing i was always unsure of was would i be able to really put it to use. Well when i went looking for a drive i also looked for floppies. Luckily i did find some NOS floppies. Now i had to find a way to get some content on them. In comes the Pi1541. This lovely project turns a Raspberry Pi into a 1541 disk drive. It actually emulates the 1541 in a cycle perfect way. This changed everything for me. With this it was now like i had 2 1541 drives.
So using VIC 2 disk backup i was now able to take a D64 disk image and write it to a real floppy. The software requires at least 16k of memory expansion. It can also use 24k. The way it works is actually quite simple. Here is what the software does.
- Prompts for a disk name and ID
- Format the new disk.
- Read in as many blocks as the available memory will allow
- Write those blocks to the floppy.
Repeat 3-4 till all blocks are copied.
It works fairly well. I’ve not had it fail on me yet. I’ve captured a small but probably uninteresting video of the process.
If you have a system compatible with the commodore 1541 disk drive you should get yourself a Pi1541. I can’t directly compare it to regular SD2IEC devices as i’ve not used those. But this thing works great. Now i can load DOOM from a real floppy (-:
Also just a little housekeeping. Its been a while since i posted again. Things are slowing down here and i might find myself with extra free time on my hands. That might turn into more posts again. I'll also acknowledge my failure to complete the 100 days to offload challenge. I'm a little disappointed but at the same time it did get me to write more posts. If only for a short period of time.
Well that's all for now
Until next time. Stay safe!